Did you know that ⅓ of our food is pollinated by bees? They are responsible for contributing over $15 billion to the value of US crop production. Bees are not only essential to our health, but the health of many important ecosystems around the world. However, in recent years, the bee populations have been declining at unprecedented rates because of pesticides, fertilizers, biodiversity loss, and deforestation to name a few. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, we are losing more than half of North America’s 4,000 native bee species, and 1 in 4 species are at risk of extinction.
sourced from the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service
"During Winter 2020-2021 (1 October 2020 – 1 April 2021), an estimated 32.2% of managed colonies in the United States were lost. This represented an increase of 9.6 percentage points (pp) over the previous winter loss rate (22.6%), and was 3.9 pp higher than the average winter loss (28.3%) reported by beekeepers over the previous 14 years."
sourced from the Bee Informed Partnership
sourced from the Bee Informed Partnership